In some fields, gas turbine engines in particular, a continual need to produce stronger and lighter metal parts, such as airfoils, with high yield forging techniques presents substantial challenges with significant opportunities for product improvement. In many respects, forging is an "art", involving, at least superficially, nothing more than simply heating a block of material (the "billet") and forcing it under considerable force into a die (form), usually with a ram. This is hardly true. The fact is that the skill of the operator can be important in ensuring careful control of the forging process, especially when the process calls for specific, critical combinations of temperature and pressure to produce a forged article, such as a turbine blade, with unique strength and heat resistance characteristics, rather than a worthless chunk of alloy. In fact, some processes, such as the GATORIZING process, developed by the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies Corporation, assignee of this application, produce very special forging by precisely controlling billet temperature and ram motion and pressure. Repeatable forging is important in precision processes such as GATORIZING to increase "yield", because, by increasing the yield, part costs can be reduced.